An Act to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons, and to limit the duration of Parliament.
The act effectively removed the right of the House of Lords to vetomoney bills completely, and replaced its right of veto over other public bills with the ability to delay them for a maximum of two years (the Parliament Act 1949 reduced this to one). It also reduced the maximum term of a parliament from seven years (as set by the Septennial Act 1716) to five.
Following the House of Lords' rejection of the 1909 "People's Budget", the House of Commons sought to establish its formal dominance over the House of Lords, which had broken convention in opposing the bill. The budget was eventually passed by the Lords, after the Commons' democratic mandate was confirmed by holding a general election in January 1910. The following Parliament Act, which looked to prevent a recurrence of the budget problems, was also widely opposed in the House of Lords, and cross-party discussion failed, particularly because of the proposed act's applicability to the passage of an Irish Home Rule Bill. Following a second general election in December, the act was passed with the assent of the monarch, George V, after the House of Lords conceded due to the government's threat that the Conservative majority in the Lords could be overcome by creating many new Liberal peers.
Background
Until the Parliament Act 1911, there was no way to resolve disagreements between the two houses of Parliament except through the creation of additional peers by the monarch.[2]Queen Anne had created twelve Tory peers to vote through the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.[3] The Reform Act 1832 had been passed when the House of Lords dropped their opposition to it: King William IV had threatened to create eighty new peers by request of the prime minister, Earl Grey.[2] This created an informal convention that the Lords would give way when the public was behind the House of Commons. For example, Irish disestablishment, which had been a major point of contention between the two main parties since the 1830s, was passed by the Lords in 1869 after Queen Victoria intervened and W. E. Gladstone won the 1868 election on the issue. However, in practice, this gave the Lords a right to demand that such public support be present and to decide the timing of a general election.[2]
It was the prevailing wisdom that the House of Lords could not amend money bills, since only the House of Commons had the right to decide upon the resources the monarch could call upon.[2] This did not, however, prevent it from rejecting such bills outright.[2] In 1860, with the repeal of the paper duties, all money bills were consolidated into a single budget. This denied the Lords the ability to reject individual components, and the prospect of voting down the entire budget was seemingly unpalatable. It was only in 1909 that this possibility became a reality.[4] Prior to the act, the Lords had had rights equal to those of the Commons over legislation but, by convention, did not utilise its right of veto over financial measures.[5]
There had been an overwhelming Conservative-Liberal Unionist majority in the Lords since the Liberal split in 1886.[2] With the Liberal Party attempting to push through significant welfare reforms with considerable popular support, problems seemed certain to arise in the relationship between the houses.[2] Between 1906 and 1909, several important measures were considerably watered down or rejected outright:[6] for example, Augustine Birrell introduced the Education Bill 1906, which was intended to address nonconformist grievances arising from the Education Act 1902, but it was amended by the Lords to such an extent that it effectively became a different bill, whereupon the Commons dropped it.[7] This led to a resolution in the House of Commons on 26 June 1907, put forward by Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, declaring that the Lords' power ought to be curtailed.[6][8] In 1909, hoping to force an election,[9] the Lords rejected the financial bill based on the government budget (the "People's Budget") put forward by David Lloyd George,[2] by 350 votes to 75.[10] This action, according to the Commons, was "a breach of the constitution and a usurpation of the rights of the Commons".[6] The Lords suggested that the Commons demonstrate at the polls the veracity of its claim that the bill represented the will of the people. The Liberal government sought to do so through the January 1910 general election. Liberal representation in the House of Commons fell steeply, but the party retained a majority with the help of a significant number of Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and Labour MPs.[6] The IPP saw the continued power of the Lords as detrimental to the prospect of securing Irish Home Rule.[4] Following the election, the Lords relented on the budget (which had been reintroduced by the government),[6] and it passed the Lords on 28 April, a day after the Commons vote.[11]
Passage
Samuel Begg's depiction of the passing of the Parliament Bill in the House of Lords, 1911
The Lords was now faced with the prospect of a Parliament Act, which had considerable support from the Irish Nationalists.[4] A series of meetings between the Liberal government and Unionist opposition members was agreed. Twenty-one such meetings were held between 16 June and 10 November.[12] The discussions considered a wide range of proposals, with initial agreement on finance bills and on a joint sitting of the Commons and the Lords as a means by which to enforce Commons superiority in controversial areas; the number of members of the Lords present would be limited so that a Liberal majority of fifty or more in the House of Commons could overrule the Lords.[13] However, the issue of home rule for Ireland was the main contention, with Unionists looking to exempt such a law from the Parliament Act procedure by means of a general exception for "constitutional" or "structural" bills. The Liberals supported an exception for bills relating to the monarchy and Protestant succession, but not home rule.[13] On 10 November, the discussions were declared to have failed.[12]
The government threatened another dissolution if the Parliament Act were not passed, and followed through on their threat when opposition in the Lords did not diminish. The December 1910 general election produced little change from January.[14] The second dissolution of Parliament now seems to have been contrary to the wishes of Edward VII. Edward had died in May 1910 while the crisis was still in progress. His successor, George V, was asked if he would be prepared to create sufficient peers, which he would only do if the matter arose.[6] This would have meant creating over 400 new Liberal peers.[15] The King, however, demanded that the bill would have to be rejected at least once by the Lords before his intervention.[13] Two amendments made by the Lords were rejected by the Commons, and opposition to the bill showed little sign of reducing. This led H. H. Asquith to declare the King's intention to overcome the majority in the House of Lords by creating sufficient new peers.[16] The bill was finally passed in the Lords on 11 August 1911, by 131 votes to 114, a majority of 17.[17] This reflected a large number of abstentions.[18]
Provisions
At the request of prominent Cabinet member Sir Edward Grey, the preamble included the words:[19][20]
Whereas it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation
—Parliament Act 1911, Foreword
The long title of the act was "An Act to make provision with respect to the powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons, and to limit the duration of Parliament."[19] Section 8 defined the short title as the "Parliament Act 1911".[21]
The bill was also an attempt to place the relationship between the House of Commons and House of Lords on a new footing. As well as the direct issue of money Bills, it set new conventions about how the power the Lords continued to hold would be used.[22] It did not change the composition of the Lords, however.[15]
The Lords would only be able to delay money bills for one month,[23] effectively ending their ability to do so.[15] These were defined as any public bill which contained only provisions dealing with the imposition, repeal, remission, alteration, or regulation of taxation; the imposition for the payment of debt or other financial purposes of charges on the Consolidated Fund, or on money provided by Parliament, or the variation or repeal of any such charges; supply; the appropriation, receipt, custody, issue or audit of accounts of public money; and the raising or guarantee of any loan or the repayment thereof. But it did not cover any sort of local taxes or similar measures. Some finance bills have not fallen within this criterion; Consolidated Fund and Appropriation bills have. The Speaker of the House of Commons would have to certify that a bill was a money bill, endorsing it with a Speaker's certificate.[15][24] The Local Government Finance Act 1988, which introduced the Community Charge ("Poll Tax"), was not certified as a money bill and was therefore considered by the Lords.[25] Whilst finance bills are not considered money bills, convention dictates that those parts of a finance bill dealing with taxation or expenditure (which, if in an act alone, would constitute a money bill) are not questioned.[26]
Other public bills could no longer be vetoed; instead, they could be delayed for up to two years. This two-year period meant that legislation introduced in the fourth or fifth years of a parliament could be delayed until after the next election, which could prove an effective measure to prevent it being passed.[15] Specifically, two years had to elapse between the second reading in the House of Commons in the first session and the passing of the bill in the House of Commons in the third session.[23] The Speaker also has to certify that the conditions of the bill have been complied with. There are significant restrictions[which?] on amendments to ensure that it is the same bill that has been rejected twice.[27] The 1911 act made clear that the life of a parliament could not be extended without the consent of the Lords.[28]
Parliament had been limited to a maximum of seven years under the Septennial Act 1716, but the Parliament Act 1911 amended the Septennial Act to limit Parliament to five years, reckoned from the first meeting of Parliament after the election. In practice, no election was absolutely forced by that limitation; until the Septennial Act was repealed by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, all parliaments were dissolved by the monarch under the royal prerogative on request of the Prime Minister.[29] The five-year maximum duration in the amended Septennial Act referred to the lifetime of the parliament, and not to the interval between general elections. For example, the 2010 general election was held five years and one day after the 2005 general election; the 1992 general election was held on 9 April 1992 and the next general election was not held until 1 May 1997. The reduction in the maximum length of a parliament was seen as a counterbalance to the new powers granted to the Commons.[16] The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, in contrast, called for general elections every five years (unless called sooner, as in 2017), and provided for an earlier dissolution of Parliament only by certain specified legal procedures. The act was repealed in 2022, restoring the previous system of dissolution under the royal prerogative.
Result
The Lords continued to suggest amendments to money bills over which it had no right of veto; and in several instances these were accepted by the Commons. These included the China Indemnity Bill 1925 and the Inshore Fishing Industry Bill 1947.[25] The use of the Lords' now temporary veto remains a powerful check on legislation.[30]
It was used in relation to the Government of Ireland Act 1914, which had been under the threat of a Lords veto, now removed. Ulster Protestants had been firmly against the passing of the bill. However, the Government of Ireland Act 1914 never came into force because of the outbreak of the First World War.[31] Amendments to the Parliament Act 1911 were made to prolong the life of the 1910 parliament following the outbreak of the First World War, and also that of the 1935 parliament due to the Second World War. These made special exemptions to the requirement to hold a general election every five years.[32]
Legislation passed without the consent of the Lords, under the provisions of the Parliament Act, is still considered primary legislation, i.e. a fully valid act of Parliament. The importance of this was highlighted in Jackson v Attorney General,[case 1] in which the lawfulness of the Parliament Act 1949 was questioned.[28] The challenge asserted that the Parliament Act 1911 had delegated power from Parliament as a whole to the Commons, and that the Parliament Act 1949 was therefore delegated rather than primary legislation. If this were the case, then the House of Commons could not further increase its own powers through the Parliament Act 1949 without direct permission from the House of Lords. Since it was passed under the 1911 act, the 1949 act had never received the required consent of the Lords.[33] However, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords found that the 1911 act was not primarily about empowering the Commons, but rather had the purpose of restricting the ability of the Lords to reject legislation, i.e. altering the process by which Parliament as a whole enacts legislation.[33] The 1949 act had therefore been lawfully enacted.[28] This ruling also appears to mean that efforts to abolish the House of Lords (a major constitutional change) by using the act could be successful, although the issue was not directly addressed in the ruling.[34]
Analysis
The Parliament Act 1911 can be seen in the context of the British constitution: rather than creating a written constitution, Parliament chose instead to legislate through the usual channels in response to the crisis. This was a pragmatic response, which avoided the further problems of codifying unwritten rules and reconstructing the entire government.[35] It is commonly considered a statute of "constitutional importance", which gives it informal priority in Parliament and in the courts with regard to whether later legislation can change it and the process by which this may happen.[36]
It is also mentioned in discussion of constitutional convention. While it replaced conventions regarding the role of the House of Lords, it also relies on several others. Section 1(1) only makes sense if money bills do not arise in the House of Lords, and the provisions in section 2(1) only if proceedings on a public bill are completed in a single session, otherwise they must fail and be put through procedure again.[37]
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, and may also legislate for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster in London. Parliament possesses legislative supremacy and thereby holds ultimate power over all other political bodies in the United Kingdom and the Overseas Territories. While Parliament is bicameral, it has three parts: the sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The three parts acting together to legislate may be described as the King-in-Parliament. The Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.
The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 are two Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which form part of the constitution of the United Kingdom. Section 2(2) of the Parliament Act 1949 provides that the two Acts are to be construed as one.
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.
A convention is an informal and uncodified tradition that is followed by the institutions of a state. In some states, notably those Commonwealth of Nations states that follow the Westminster system and whose political systems derive from British constitutional law, most government functions are guided by constitutional convention rather than by a formal written constitution. In these states, actual distribution of power may be markedly different from those the formal constitutional documents describe. In particular, the formal constitution often confers wide discretionary powers on the head of state that, in practice, are used only on the advice of the head of government, and in some cases not at all.
The Salisbury Convention is a constitutional convention in the United Kingdom under which the House of Lords should not oppose the second or third reading of any government legislation promised in its election manifesto. The origins of the convention date back to the late 19th century, at which time the Conservatives held a majority in the House of Lords and, with the support of the third Marquess of Salisbury, developed the "Referendal Theory", which applied solely to Liberal legislation, under which the House of Lords could obstruct legislation until it had received majority approval at a general election. This was changed following the landslide Labour Party victory in the 1945 general election, which produced a Labour government seen as having a popular mandate for significant reform, while once again there was a Conservative majority in the House of Lords. The fifth Marquess of Salisbury announced that the Lords "would not seek to thwart the main lines of Labour's legislation provided it derived from the party's manifesto for the previous election". From this point, manifesto bills were only to be adjusted by the Lords; however, on non-manifesto bills, the Lords were able to act as they had before.
An upper house is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house. The house formally designated as the upper house is usually smaller and often has more restricted power than the lower house. A legislature composed of only one house is described as unicameral.
"Elective dictatorship", also called "executive dominance" in political science, is a phrase describing the state in which a typical Westminster system state's parliament is dominated by the government of the day. It refers to the fact that the legislative programme of Parliament is determined by the government, and government bills virtually always pass the legislature because of the nature of the majoritarian first-past-the-post electoral system, which almost always produces strong government, in combination with the imposition of party discipline on the governing party's majority, which almost always ensures loyalty.
The Parliament Act 1949 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It reduced the power of the House of Lords to delay certain types of legislation – specifically public bills other than money bills – by amending the Parliament Act 1911.
In the Westminster system, a money bill or supply bill is a bill that solely concerns taxation or government spending, as opposed to changes in public law.
The 1909/1910 People's Budget was a proposal of the Liberal government that introduced unprecedented taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's wealthy to fund new social welfare programmes. It passed the House of Commons in 1909 but was blocked by the House of Lords for a year and became law in April 1910.
The reform of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, has been a topic of discussion in UK politics for more than a century. Multiple governments have attempted reform, beginning with the introduction of the Parliament Act 1911 by the incumbent Liberal Government. When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, the Blair government passed the House of Lords Act 1999. On 7 November 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create a public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1,101 consultation responses and numerous debates in Parliament and the media. However, no consensus on the future of the upper chamber emerged.
Since 1997 the United Kingdom government has been engaged in reforming the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The history of reform before 1997, is set out in sections below about reforms of composition and powers carried out in the past and of unsuccessful proposals and attempts at reform in the twentieth century. Proposals include decreasing the number of lords, introducing a system where lords are democratically elected, or abolition of the House of Lords in favour of a unicameral Parliament.
R (Jackson) v Attorney General [2005] UKHL 56 is a House of Lords case noted for containing obiter comments by the judiciary acting in their official capacity suggesting that there may be limits to parliamentary sovereignty, the orthodox position being that it is unlimited in the United Kingdom.
An Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom is primary legislation passed by the UK Parliament in Westminster, London.
The constitution of the United Kingdom comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document, thus it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which, for the first time, set in legislation a default fixed election date for general elections in the United Kingdom. It remained in force until 2022, when it was repealed. Since then, as before its passage, elections are required by law to be held at least once every five years, but can be called earlier if the prime minister advises the monarch to exercise the royal prerogative to do so. Prime ministers have often employed this mechanism to call an election before the end of their five-year term, sometimes fairly early in it. Critics have said this gives an unfair advantage to the incumbent prime minister, allowing them to call a general election at a time that suits them electorally. While it was in force, the FTPA removed this longstanding power of the prime minister.
Parliamentary sovereignty is an ancient concept central to the functioning of the constitution of the United Kingdom but which is also not fully defined and has long been debated. Since the subordination of the monarchy under parliament, and the increasingly democratic methods of parliamentary government, there have been the questions of whether parliament holds a supreme ability to legislate and whether or not it should.
The concept of the separation of powers has been applied to the United Kingdom and the nature of its executive, judicial and legislative functions. Historically, the apparent merger of the executive and the legislature, with a powerful Prime Minister drawn from the largest party in parliament and usually with a safe majority, led theorists to contend that the separation of powers is not applicable to the United Kingdom. However, in recent years it does seem to have been adopted as a necessary part of the UK constitution.
The issue of Ireland has been a major one in British politics, intermittently so for centuries. Britain's attempts to control and administer the island, or parts thereof, have had significant consequences for British politics, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although nominally autonomous until the end of the 18th century, Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
The position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was not created as a result of a single action; it evolved slowly and organically over three hundred years due to numerous Acts of Parliament, political developments, and accidents of history.
References
Case law
↑ Jackson v Attorney General, UKHL 56, [2005] 4 All ER 1253.
Ensor, R.C.K. (1952). England 1870–1914. The Oxford History of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press. OCLC5079147.
Jackson, Paul; Leopold, Patricia (2001). O. Hood Phillips & Jackson: Constitutional and Administrative Law (8thed.). London: Sweet and Maxwell. ISBN978-0-421-57480-9.
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